


Norwolk

by Ladycat



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:57:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So Spike gets sneaky. He uses all he's learned at stealth and all his gifted speed and strength to do things like dart in and remake the bed, leaving glasses of lukewarm tea in his wake. He cleans the bathroom kamikaze style, one whole swoop because he's not getting another shot. Soups or other easily-digestible foods—or so says the internet, and in one desperate outing, Angel's newest secretary—are placed like tokens throughout the apartment, random jewels to be discovered when they smell good enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Norwolk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kita (thekita)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekita/gifts).



When Connor's sick, Spike gets sneaky. It doesn't matter that it's just the two of them rattling around their little apartment, Spike's got a certain level of pride to maintain. That, and well, he doesn't really know what to do. Girls want to be coddled and cosseted when they feel rotten. Spike's better trained for Dru's version, but he's taken care of a sniffly 'bit enough to know that a bit of petting and running and fetching makes the whole world seem better.

Connor's not a girl, though.

A fact he's pretty well aware of since Connor's starkers on the bed.

"Sure you don't want a cover?" The words pop out before he can stop them, too damn anxious for the casual nonchalance he's aiming for. But Connor's starkers, as mentioned, and sick-flushed so every bit of him's shiny with sweat that stinks of rot. "Or a _bath?"_

"Maybe later," he rumbles and curls up, arms over his belly like a child's. "Just go away, okay?"

So Spike gets sneaky. He uses all he's learned at stealth and all his gifted speed and strength to do things like dart in and remake the bed, leaving glasses of lukewarm tea in his wake. He cleans the bathroom kamikaze style, one whole swoop because he's not getting another shot. Soups or other easily-digestible foods—or so says the internet, Willow, and in one desperate outing, Angel's newest secretary—are placed like tokens throughout the apartment, random jewels to be discovered when they smell good enough. DVD racks keep magically refilling, going through first a John Woo oeuvre before settling onto more classic Samurai films. Connor's got this thing about rigid honor, and he loves critique the sword fighting.

He feels damn stupid for not picking up on that first, but Connor doesn't say anything.

Connor isn't really saying _anything_. Some groans, occasionally, or a retching whimper that makes Spike's toes want to curl up, protecting the vulnerable nail. He'll breathe out a few specific words when Spike badgers him into responding, but they're lackluster at best, raspily venomous more often.

He's getting better. Spike knows that.

But all he wants to do is let Connor curl up around him, letting him sooth that too-hot body of his, and all Connor wants is to curl up into a ball and disappear. Spike can't blame him, of course, but it does leave him wanting.

Three days in Angel makes a brief stop. Spike leaves, not wanting to hear about all the things he's not doing right, or how Angel'll suddenly magic it away just by dint of being Connor's father. He's feeling sorry for himself by now, sympathetic illness or some other rot, and he's just barely aware enough to recognize the origins and get the hell out.

Angel doesn't need ammunition.

So it's a surprise when Angel finds him on the roof, waving through a haze of smoke until he finds the stubs Spike's building forts with. "Hey. He says to brush your teeth when you come back. You might want to take a shower, too."

"He say that?"

"No, I'm saying that since I'm about to wheeze and I don't have to breathe."

"Tosser."

The sky is as dark as it ever gets in L.A., a false dawn that never truly deepens. Spike misses the stars. He never learned their names. "He says you're doing a good job."

"Thanks, Angel, cause validation is everything I'm looking for."

Angel gives him a look and kicks him. "Go back downstairs, idiot." Spike harrumphs but five minutes later his internal clock is dinging like mad. It's too soon after Angel's command, but for Connor he'll sacrifice a bit of face.

He's on the top stair when he hears Angel say, "Thank you. You always knew how to care for the ones you love. I'm glad he has that."

Spike ends up stumping down the stairs, cursing Angel for his rotten stupid timing and his buggering stupid words and just generally being a rotten, buggering, stupidhead.

The door slams open before Spike can catch it, but Connor just hmms a greeting and waves a thin, lackluster hand. "Come watch _Seven Swords of Samurai_ with me," he offers. There's no inflection around the words, but Spike's not stupid.

He goes, curling around Connor like a second skin, cool hands settling where the sweat's pooled worse. He starts rubbing it away without thinking about it, because the tv's on, and Connor's still too hot, but not as far gone as the past few days, and Angel knows—really knows—that Spike loves his kid, would do anything for him, and if Connor smells sick-sour, well, Spike will just have to give him a bath later.

Whether the brat wants it or not.

"Turn it down, deaf-boy," Spike mutters and scratches right at the edge of Connor's hair. "Berk."

"Do-gooder."

"Oi, that's fighting words, you know."

"Fighting _word_ , maybe. Watch the movie, Spike."

"Don't get sick again," Spike retorts, and lets Connor nestle more comfortably. "I mean it. I'll dump you at hospital and be rid of it, next time."

"Shh. This is the good part," Connor says, while his fingers weave promises into Spike's.

* * * 

By day five, Spike’s grateful he’s dead and doesn’t actually have to breathe.

Inside the bathroom, Connor makes a noise like he's dying and Spike tries not to flinch. The sheets are torn shreds under his fingers, which is all right since Spike's already got an order in for a new set, to be delivered in the next day or two. These are getting burned. With prejudice.

Spike makes a mental note to bug Angel for some bleach. Their bottle’s running low.

Another noise leaks out, low and long and with a rattle. It's like listening to an elephant die, which normally would be an amusing thought, but not when it's coming from _Connor_.

Who isn't letting Spike in. Not for anything.

He _is_ getting better. Spike knows this is germy death-throes and that by morning Connor’ll feel a hundred times more normal, because that’s what Willow said enough times that Spike actually believes her.

Connor retches again.

"That's it," he snaps, getting up with a flare that doesn't work without his coat, "I'm going out. Just... bloody don't die while I'm gone, all right? Your Da'll kill me."

The worst part, Spike thinks as he tromps to the roof to smoke, is that Angel _wouldn't_. It's just sick, nothing deadly (now, and Spike carefully doesn’t think once about life without antibiotics and pedialyte and aspirin) or they'd both have had doctors waiting terrified and shivering in the wings, just in case Connor _twitched_ the wrong way without them to witness it. But it's the kind of sick that isn't sniffling so much as _emptying_ , leaving a full-body ache that Spike's seen strong men kill themselves over. Men didn’t get sick, not really, and when they did they never really figured out how to deal with it over the last few millennia: an evolutionary defect.

Even back when he was mortal and being 'sickly' wasn't that uncommon, it was a boyishly-termed phrase. It was meant for males who would never be mates—be _men_ —shunted off to the side to handle the books and learning because they weren’t to have a proper life, with proper wives and kids.

William, the scholarly poet, if failed, has always known that.

The cigarette flickers wildly in his hands, a lingering cherry glow like the lasers Illyria found one day and was tormented with, much like a pretty calico who couldn't paw the red-thing fast enough. He's not so far away that he can't keep tabs on Connor—that's the point, after all—but with his face turned into the delightful smog of L.A., its noise a distant thrum Spike can loose himself in, the waiting's at least not so bad.

He gets through half a pack and doesn't think about how this is the only time he smokes, now. Up here, with only the city to see, when Connor's too sick or too hurt to complain.

Not that he does, really. Not with words.

"Christ, only I could hook up with a bloke who barely talks and never tells the blood truth," Spike mutters. It’s no more than he deserves.

When Spike is finally aware of the silence from down below after a cacophony of flushing, he mutters and thumps and stumps his way back downstairs and kicks the bathroom door in. Literally, since the idiot _locked it_ "Right. Not a word."

Connor looks up from red-rimmed eyes and tries his best to glare.

"Well, that's pathetic. I've met kittens with more oomph than you. I mean it," he adds, sharp and ice-bright when Connor cracks chapped lips open, "not _one fucking word_ out of you. I've indulged your manly bits of self-sacrifice and this is ruddy well _it_. I'm done. Suffer on your own bloody time."

It sounds good, Spike reflects, and the anger certainly gives it enough power that Connor looks pale and confused, curled up on the bathroom rug (which is also getting burned, with _extreme_ prejudice) as he watches. He looks frightened, but that's probably just because there's nothing but too-thin blood inside of him right then, no food or warmth to give him room to truly fear.

Also, Spike's running a bath. Which sort of takes the sting out of words like _I'm done_.

Most of the indulgences in the apartment revolve around electronics, an opulent bed that can hold far more than two skinny men, and a sofa that Spike thinks will finally stand up to their daily games of Guitar Hero and Doom. Well, there's also a weapons collection museums would love to get their hands on, but those are work expenses. Everything else about the apartment is standard and boring because neither of them can give a damn about the decor so long as they can fuck and fight and play as much as they wish within the walls. Angel brings them bits and bobs, sometimes, and so does Illyria when she's feeling Fred-like. But the only thing Angel _really_ put his foot down about (other than a dishwasher, which Spike has yet to complain about) is the bathroom. That got redone within a year of them claiming the apartment.

Spike watches the water fill their three-man-deep claw-footed black bathtub and wonders how he'll say thanks without really saying it, something that’s become progressively harder through the years and both of them need to do it more often. He and Connor have had fun in their tub before, of course, but it’s the silly kind that’s convenience. A two by two shower stall would’ve been just as entertaining.

This is different. This... it’s _important_ , having it now.

"Sp—"

_"Not one blasted word."_

Steam fills up the room long before the water is at an acceptable level. Spike adds Epsom salts and a bit of something that smells green and sharp without quite being minty—rosemary?—that he'd sent to Red for, in a moment of sheer desperation he isn't talking about. The smell of it cuts through the heavy layer of _sick_ that smothers everything, and Spike sighs with relief.

He's forgotten how demoralizing the stench of human sickness is. Not blood, or guts, or pain or death. Just... sick. It's too familiar, even for a vampire dead near two hundred (so he's rounding up a little, whatever) years.

Connor whimpers softly, a rasp of sound given how raw his throat must be, as he's slid in the water. He doesn't object, though. Spike climbs in afterward, pillowing him against his chest, and for a while he watches their skin turn pink and flush and doesn't move at all.

Just breathes. He does that a lot, for a dead thing. In and out, a steady beat that Connor unconsciously matches. Deep, and slow. Easy.

"That's it," Spike croons, under his breath as he reaches for the cloth and the gel-soap he'd picked up a few days ago. The bottle has a lot of stupid words on it, but it says _oatmeal_ , too, and that's all the soft, whispering memory in his head needs. "Just breathe, pet, in and out. Slow, now, let your body find its rhythms again, shhhh, in and out, nice and soft."

Connor isn't really listening. Spike knows that, Connor knows that, hell, even Angel atop his mighty steel castle knows that. But Spike knows that for at least a little, Connor was hummed at and crooned to like every other child, a pattern of nonsense that was all about tone, about comfort and safety for tiny, fragile bones and a heart that beats too quick for a body not yet fully formed. It doesn't matter what happened later, in Quartoth, in L.A., the nightmare Connor doesn't bother thinking about regarding which one is his mum, and why. None of that matters.

Just that moment when a child is small and fragile and utterly beautiful, tucked into warm arms, and has someone who loves enough to say so.

Connor's too big to tuck, but Spike's got legs and a torso to hold him with, wrapping around him as much as he can. He lets the cloth glide over skin gone nearly translucent, a gentle rub that's less about getting clean and more about pressure, and touch, and comfort.

Although the cleanliness bit is a perk, too.

This is the kind of pampering Spike knows how to do, a brush of words that are meaningless beyond the affection in their tone, touch that holds more of life than death. He's good at this, looses himself in it, until Connor's breathing steady and mostly strong, eyes shut without the pinch, clean and blood-pink as he rests trusting and sure against Spike.

"You're such a brat," Spike murmurs into hair that goes stringy when it's wet, fingers rubbing circles of bubbles on Connor's scalp. "A spoiled, petulant brat, having me run after you and fetch and clean. I'm not a maid. Not your girlfriend. I'm a monster. I'm... " a stupid, besotted sot, same as he was when he lived. Spike knows it, the same way he knows Connor's never once asked for anything. Spike runs and fetches and cleans because this is something he can't kill, can't fuck better, and he doesn't know how to handle something so sincerely human.

It's terrifying.

"Stupid, annoying _brat_. That's what you are. Your father's son, through and through."

Against him in the water, Connor shifts so he can press his faint smile into Spike's neck. "I love you, too, Spike."

"That's not what I'm saying, and you know it."

But all Connor says is, "I know it," which isn't confirmation at all, and when the water starts to cool he adds, "Can I have some broth, maybe? A little?"

Spike doesn't run, leaving Connor in freshly hot water, but he does move a little faster than a normal human would.


End file.
